The union of prosperity as a “party of a new type” (connotative meanings in M. V. Nechkina's monograph the Decembrist movement)

The connotative semiotic level of M. V. Nechkina’s monograph The Decembrist Movement (1955), which was not previously the subject of a special historiographical analysis, is investigated. The analysis of the Soviet historian’s text revealed that it is built on the principle of multilevel semantics: besides the literal meaning, there is also the culturally-based one. Culturally-based content was formed due to the very form of narration. M. V. Nechkina described the organizational structure of the Union of Prosperity within the official discourse about Russian revolution and the history of the Bolshevik Party. The discourse used by the monograph’s author provided the actualization of official Soviet ideologemes in the text and set up the mechanism of intertextual connections. The immersion of the Soviet historian’s narrative into this cultural context ensured the inclusion of secondary meanings in it. By referring to the precedent texts of the Soviet era M. V. Nechkina indicated that the organizational structure of the Union of Prosperity corresponded to the Bolshevik Party structure. These parallels had an important interpretational significance - due to them the Decembrists were interpreted as real revolutionaries. The study of connotative meanings in M. V. Nechkina’s monograph is essential for understanding the mechanism of formation of the Decembrists’ Soviet image on the basis of the combination of scientific and cultural codes.